Econsultancy’s checklist for social media measurement

It’s probably the question that we as an agency get asked the most: “Are there any measurable benefits to investing in a social media strategy?” Of course, we know through experience that there are, and thankfully the tools for reporting successes are improving in leaps and bounds. The third extract from Econsultancy’s new Internet Marketing Strategy Briefing focuses on just this issue, and its author, Econsultancy US Vice President of Research has shared his insights on the most crucial ways to track social media:

Refining data

Tornquist mentions a condition that many have been afflicted by: “analysis paralysis”. Data is of no use just sitting there, it needs to be processed into actionable insight to be of any worth. It’s such a waste to let the mine of data harvested from online and mobile activity go to waste, and what the industry needs is more people who possess both analytical skills and commercial/marketing nouse to make this happen.

Social benchmarks

Brands are swiftly trying to ascertain how to assign real value to the measure of social media success such as Facebook fans and ‘Likes’ and Twitter followers. They will be pleased to hear that the average value of a Facebook fan is $136.38 (based on Syncapse’s survey of 4,000 fans of well known brands). This figure may support the notion that fans are worth more than non-fans. However, because fans are likely to have already been engaged with the brand they may have spent more anyhow. Econsultancy suggests that where consumers are fans or ‘Like’ your brand, these typically more social active users are more likely to share content and communicate with their networks about that brand, making them valuable customers or prospects.

Action or interaction

The most important thing to track may be not just friends and follower numbers, but what these people are doing. Are they sharing your messaging, talking about your brands and promoting you to their networks? If not – why not? Investigate where your followers are leaving comments, sharing in forums or leaving customer reviews or ratings on your website (and other sites) to know the true worth of the traffic you’re attracting via social media.

Traffic

Measuring the traffic referred to your website from social platforms is an obvious way of knowing their value, but bear in mind that quality often beats quantity when it comes to the bottom line.

Sales

You’re probably already tracking sales from organic Google referrals and from paid search results, so why not track other social channels such as Twitter and LinkedIn? Other brands have already learnt the value of their social media efforts; Dell was able to attribute $1m from Twitter in 18 months, while Blendtec discovered its recent YouTube campaign helped fuel a “five-fold increase in sales”.

Leads

Some companies’ products and services don’t allow for e-commerce, but word-of-mouth from social media can be a useful alternative way of bringing in interested prospects.

Search marketing

Search and social are now very much complementary, and you can use sites like Twitter and YouTube to bag valuable search rankings on your brand search terms. Have you considered social sharing sites such as Digg? A well-placed piece of content (story, video, image) can generate a lot of traffic, a link from Digg and plenty more interest from beyond Digg. Once you’ve garnered 100 links, your page is likely to rank highly on Google, meaning plenty of ongoing traffic.

Brand metrics

The word of mouth and viral factors of sites like Twitter and Facebook can swing the key brand metrics (eg. brand favourability, brand awareness, brand recall, propensity to buy) either positively or negatively, so they’re well worth tracking. Brands already harness this tool for TV ads, which are known to drive search activity. Why not similarly measure the ‘click driving’ effect of social media campaigns?

PR

Traditional PR has struggled to come to terms with an age where everybody has a blog and voice. If you’re putting resources into measuring brand mentions in offline media, then you should definitely be measuring social media mentions.

Customer engagement

It’s a fickle environment out there, with consumers now having such a proliferation of brands offering similar products and services. Engaging with your customers is therefore more vital than ever. Econsultancy research has proved that an engaged customer will “recommend your brand, convert more readily and purchase more often”, and there’s no better place to engage than online.

Retention

The idea is that boosting customer engagement will in turn drive customer retention; crucial to your future business success. Participate in social media and your retention rates should rise. For inspiration look to Zappos, a Twitter marketing success story, which is nearing $1bn in sales this year, attributing 75% of orders to repeat customers.

Profits

Engage customers to drive loyalty and you’re likely to generate more business from your existing customer base. They in turn should recommend you to their online and offline social networks. Not only does this make for a more profitable and efficient organisation, it means less need for budget-busting customer acquisition efforts.

In the long term, investing in social media measurement will help businesses strike a better balance between acquisition and retention. As Econsultancy reminds us: it’s cheaper to keep existing customers than to seek out new ones.